The trouble with telling tanks W2W pulls are a mandatory norm.

[Yeol]

Is one of those max level jobs a tank?

Does said max level tank job happen to be the one they're playing?

If the answer is no to either question, cut the person some slack and don't expect them to W2W pull; chances are good they're leveling that job and don't have comprehensive experience with it yet.

For sure. If it happens to be their first tank, I'd cut them some slack up to a certain point. I still expect them to play better than a sprout tank. There is almost no excuse for them to single pull at level 50+ content for example.

Sprout tanks have not seen how other tanks pull in dungeons (Unless they look up a video or something). On the other hand, the player with multiple jobs at max level has. This already puts them at higher standards than a sprout tank. They're also expected to learn the usage of AoE and mitigation faster than a sprout tank since they have higher game experience.

Add the fact that in leveling dungeons the W2W pulls are a lot uglier; enemies hit harder; tanks gear isn't ilvl capped; the tank has basically none of his sustain options available to him, and the urge to pull big gets beaten out of you pretty quick.

I didn't deny that leveling dungeons are harder, especially when people are not ready for them. I already stated this in my older posts. But they get easier. Especially after you unlock certain abilities.

As stated above, I expect players with multiple jobs at max level to pull more than 1 group of mobs by Lvl 50.

[Xirean]

Honestly all this thread has shown me is that there really isn't some toxic W2W only culture and that it's just a strawman. Every person who discusses doing multi pulls puts clarifications in their statements and people still try to pick them apart. The only culture of pulling here is the basic expectation to increase your skill as you get higher into the game. If THAT is a problem to you; please explain to me why.

[Nishira]

but my issue is that many people are willingly defending people who either do not want to learn, who are set in their ways to do the least amount of effort they need to do to pass something, even if it takes double or triple the time an average run takes, all just to appear as nice and helpful to the rest of the community

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I perceive it very differently. I think the game itself is extremely welcoming and friendly to anyone. It does not discriminate when it comes to ability, motivation etc. If content is too hard for you, they'll make it easier for you one way or another. So in essence, the game itself promotes a relaxed mindset, personally I find that refreshing. If you want a real challenge, you have to go look for it and find likeminded people, which imo is an elegant solution.

Not everyone can improve. Not everyone wants to improve. Some are new. Some have returned after a long break. Some people will burn all that motivation on their job already and just want to log on and not get more hassle thrown their way. Some are a bit older and don't have the best reflexes (anymore). Some are tired cause they have small children, a demanding job, a migraine. Some suffer from anxiety, depression, you name it, and are not feeling at their best. Applying more pressure isn't necessarily going to help, isn't always going to magically improve their performance. They may be perfectly comfortable with where they are at. And the game respects this, very much. So if players defend the right to play at your comfort level, whether it's for themselves or others, I simply see them respecting the spirit of the game.

Expecting, demanding, pushing, complaining when players are not playing to the full potential of a class or role seems off to me. You can offer help, you can respectfully nudge once or twice but you can't and shouldn't make people play the way you want them to if that's uncomfortable to them. Which "You're not paying my sub" is pretty much the logical response to because it's so true. Instead of being frustrated with or exasperated about that attitude, understand what triggers it and respect the limitations of others. Everyone has them, and there's no rule book that says we have to overcome all of them. When someone logs on to relax a bit, that may just not be the right time to expect that haha.

[Goji1639]

I didn't deny that leveling dungeons are harder, especially when people are not ready for them. I already stated this in my older posts. But they get easier. Especially after you unlock certain abilities.

As stated above, I expect players with multiple jobs at max level to pull more than 1 group of mobs by Lvl 50.

That's all fine; you just asked why tanks who appear to be experienced still pull small in leveling dungeons. The reason is because in leveling content a lot of Healers/Groups can't handle big pulls, so if you overreach you die a lot. Pulling small isn't as fun as pulling big, but it is more fun than constantly eating pavement.

I completely understand why a lot of tanks decide it's not worth it when they get a leveling dungeon, so they just assume the group isn't capable and pull accordingly. At 80, however, I agree that there isn't a whole lot of reason not to pull everything; but it's still kind of stupid how much it bothers people here when a tank pulls small.

[Xirean]

That's all fine; you just asked why tanks who appear to be experienced still pull small in leveling dungeons. The reason is because in leveling content a lot of Healers/Groups can't handle big pulls, so if you overreach you die a lot. Pulling small isn't as fun as pulling big, but it is more fun than constantly eating pavement.

I completely understand why a lot of tanks decide it's not worth it when they get a leveling dungeon, so they just assume the group isn't capable and pull accordingly. At 80, however, I agree that there isn't a whole lot of reason not to pull everything; but it's still kind of stupid how much it bothers people here when a tank pulls small.

I think it comes down to some people's default is big pulls, so if someone does small then it's weird to not say so ahead of time. And others are the exact opposite.

[Rinhi]

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I perceive it very differently. I think the game itself is extremely welcoming and friendly to anyone. It does not discriminate when it comes to ability, motivation etc. If content is too hard for you, they'll make it easier for you one way or another. So in essence, the game itself promotes a relaxed mindset, personally I find that refreshing. If you want a real challenge, you have to go look for it and find likeminded people, which imo is an elegant solution.

I both agree and disagree there, I do like that the game pretty much promotes a relaxed playstyle, but I disagree about the bolded part
The game doesn't really do anything like that, it pushes it onto the other 3-7-23 people to carry that person, which inherently isn't a bad thing per se as everyone can have a bad day, but it goes at the expense of everyone else where some people will be more vocal, some will be less vocal, some of them won't care about someone wasting their time, either on purpose or not while others do care about their time investment
personally, and people might be surprised considering I've been called a tryhard elitist raider before, I don't really want challenging content, maybe for the first few runs, sure, but after that I love that it becomes a face roll if you know the basics of your class

Not everyone can improve. Not everyone wants to improve. Some are new. Some have returned after a long break. Some people will burn all that motivation on their job already and just want to log on and not get more hassle thrown their way. Some are a bit older and don't have the best reflexes (anymore). Some are tired cause they have small children, a demanding job, a migraine. Some suffer from anxiety, depression, you name it, and are not feeling at their best. Applying more pressure isn't necessarily going to help, isn't always going to magically improve their performance. They may be perfectly comfortable with where they are at. And the game respects this, very much. So if players defend the right to play at your comfort level, whether it's for themselves or others, I simply see them respecting the spirit of the game.

sure, some of these are valid reasons and excuses if true, but they're also used to handwave bad players away far more often than they are used legitimately, at least in my experience
as an example, a troll thread about disability had someone make almost that exact post but used disability as an excuse to 'win' that discussion, while completely ignoring or invalidating the posters that disagreed with their statement - the person making that post neither knew anyone with one, nor did they have one themselves and yet they used disability as an excuse to basically "force" people to accept bad players, and in my eyes you're doing the same here, no offence to you and how valid some of them are
in addition to that, some of those, like people suffering from migraine for example, shouldn't be playing a game when they're having an attack and honestly, neither should someone tank if even single pulling or even playing with real people gives them an anxiety attack
believe it or not (I wouldn't, considering it's the internet and stuff and I destroy my own argument/point of view before even posting it :P), but I suffer from clinical depression, generalised anxiety disorder and heavy migraine attacks and the first two have not kept me from playing and enjoying the game, or improving, I know this is highly anecdotal and I certainly don't speak for other people who suffer from the same illnesses, but to me, feeling like a burden, playing badly in a group setting, is the absolute worst feeling I have in this game and the few people who I know who suffer from anxiety would say the very same thing, that being carried or being bad is worse than feeling anxious over playing with others, though maybe that's why some people react with vitriol if you give them advice - they feel like this as well but refuse to accept it

Expecting, demanding, pushing, complaining when players are not playing to the full potential of a class or role seems off to me. You can offer help, you can respectfully nudge once or twice but you can't and shouldn't make people play the way you want them to if that's uncomfortable to them. Which "You're not paying my sub" is pretty much the logical response to because it's so true. Instead of being frustrated with or exasperated about that attitude, understand what triggers it and respect the limitations of others. Everyone has them, and there's no rule book that says we have to overcome all of them. When someone logs on to relax a bit, that may just not be the right time to expect that haha.

again, no offence, and while I'll say that some players might come across like this on the forum sometimes, it doesn't really happen in the game, while the "you don't pay my sub" response gets used quite often, no matter how nicely packaged the advice is
I know this will get the usual "maybe you don't sound as nice as you think you do" or "if you keep running into them, you're the issue" posts from certain posters because that way, they can pretend it's on the people posting about it or the people giving advice, but that's a lot of bull.
many of the times I've encountered that type of response (or worse), I wasn't even the one giving it, but of course that gets ignored or you get called a liar for saying that because it absolutely can't be the bad players that are toxic, it must be the ones trying to help, and that I find pretty effing annoying on these forums, if I'm honest

[Nishira]

I hate quoting on this forum Rinhi, so I'll just respond this way I didn't mean dungeons or raids with making things easier, I meant duties you fail, or trials with the.. echoes mechanic? The game itself is helpful if you stumble. It wants you to succeed, to continue with the story. It's not out to make it super challenging in the content that is designed for everyone. So for better or worse, the game is ok with people not playing optimally.

Funnily enough I do have strong anxiety, struggled with depression a long time and suffer from migraines, lots of them. Whatever I do doesn't impact the migraine usually, so in the end I raided and led healer teams with migraines. And sometimes I was not 100% brilliant at moments like that. I try to avoid doing dungeons when I have them, but I have them so often that it would stall everything I do so much of the time, that I proceed anyway at times. People live, we make it, it could be worse.. well you get the idea. So yes, sometimes people will feel rather crappy and still play. And sometimes whatever is causing it will impact your reaction or processing speed. Sometimes anxiety can make me freeze up (fun on unexpected big pulls and my brain goes EEEEEE), which is something I've heard more often from fellow healers.

I personally think it is so much better if a community is accepting of non-optimal. If it's not a big deal. Because effectively you enlarge people's comfort zone that way, instead of restricting it. People stop playing tanks and healers because they are scared to screw up. They are scared to make people upset and angry with them. And to then say "Good riddance, you were apparently not cut out for it" is a *beep* reaction which I do see happening. It's just a game, support people, have fun with them, laugh with them, forgive mistakes, forgive limitations, let it revolve around the people and the shared fun instead of the clock and 'optimal this' and 'optimal that', and efficiency and all that crap. Bleh.

I greatly dislike being a burden to a group, so I will always try my best, try be prepared etc. But I'd rather the atmosphere is such that at times you get people who blissfully unaware waltz in and have no clue, and that that is ok, part of the random 'no idea what I'm signing up for, yolo', than that everyone can only join in if they perform up to standards other players set. If you do that in your FC, in PF, in your raids obviously that is fine. But we're talking DF here afaik. And then it should be ok for people to play at their comfort levels, instead of yours.

[Packetdancer]

Even in stone single pulls are a waste of time. Off the top of my head cannot think of any dungeon where a single differs from a double pull in terms of handling.

Depending on the DPS makeup, it's quite possible the tank is the only person in the party who has an AoE attack when you're in an early ARR dungeon. Sure, Bard's at least got Quick Nock by level 18 (though that still potentially means they might not have it in Sastasha), but Samurai doesn't have an AoE ability at all until level 28, and Dragoon's down any AoEs until level 40. Ninja gets an AoE Ninjutsu at 35, but you don't have an AoE ability which doesn't require mudra until level 38.

I would argue that pulling multiple groups -- much less pulling wall-to-wall -- when you have only the tank with AoE abilities and everyone else is single-targeting is a wildly different scenario than pulling wall-to-wall when everyone has AoEs they can do. Heck, you only need to try it in Sastasha -- try pulling wall-to-wall with a dragoon and a ninja synced to 18 as your DPS (neither of whom will have AoE abilities in there), versus pulling wall-to-wall with a machinist and a dancer synced to 18 (both of whom do).

[Xirean]

I personally think it is so much better if a community is accepting of non-optimal. If it's not a big deal. Because effectively you enlarge people's comfort zone that way, instead of restricting it. People stop playing tanks and healers because they are scared to screw up. They are scared to make people upset and angry with them. And to then say "Good riddance, you were apparently not cut out for it" is a *beep* reaction which I do see happening. It's just a game, support people, have fun with them, laugh with them, forgive mistakes, forgive limitations, let it revolve around the people and the shared fun instead of the clock and 'optimal this' and 'optimal that', and efficiency and all that crap. Bleh.

I greatly dislike being a burden to a group, so I will always try my best, try be prepared etc. But I'd rather the atmosphere is such that at times you get people who blissfully unaware waltz in and have no clue, and that that is ok, part of the random 'no idea what I'm signing up for, yolo', than that everyone can only join in if they perform up to standards other players set. If you do that in your FC, in PF, in your raids obviously that is fine. But we're talking DF here afaik. And then it should be ok for people to play at their comfort levels, instead of yours.

Again I ask if that is really so common? The appeal I see people making is a baseline standard of basic proficiency. Now that line may mean something different to different people, but every time I see this argument brought it, it often comes off as expecting people to know how to play the game at all is unacceptable. Also as far as toxicity goes, expecting perfection is mirrored by expecting mediocrity. I've straight up had a healer refuse to heal a tank because they tried to do a double pull once. They didn't even try. On the flip side I've seen healers rescue tanks into adds or throw a dot on a pac to get bigger pulls.

People are trying to figure out what baseline is acceptable and in my overall experience that tends towards mostly larger pulls.

[RinaB]

I pull what my group can handle. I feel it's a tanks job to monitor the dps output and the healers ability/mana and pull accordingly. I like smooth runs. Now if they are just being rude and pulling and being stupid I leave and go play cards or something for half an hour lol.